


Hyperhuman

by ifonlyiwaswittier



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: First Meetings, M/M, superhero au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-20 19:46:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14900823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifonlyiwaswittier/pseuds/ifonlyiwaswittier
Summary: When someone knocks on Levi's door trying to recruit him to the Survey Corps, Levi spits at the pimply faced teen's feet. He doesn't need anything the Survey Corps can offer him- especially not their unbearable "no killing" rule. He’d rather lose his rights, become a fucking pariah, be relegated to flickering TV and dry cereal meals for the rest of his miserable life than sign himself away to that gussied up prison.





	Hyperhuman

**Author's Note:**

> Commission for the wonderful [@oh-who-knows](oh-who-knows.tumblr.com) on Tumblr. Find more info [on my tumblr](https://ellswritesthings.tumblr.com/post/175825915436/commissions-so-ells-can-get-top-surgery) if you're interested!

Of course Levi’s heard of him before. There’s no one in the whole damn city who hasn’t heard of him. Levi watches him on the news almost every night, The Commander, traipsing around the city with his Survey Corps dumbasses, receiving mayoral awards for saving the day, all while wearing skin tight green and gold that makes him look like a goddamn Saint Patty’s Day float. He admirably plays the role of philanthropist turned tech genius and fitness god, a man who’s so generously given himself to the cause. Just watching the whole dog and pony show, faux patriotism and airbrushed violence to boot, makes Levi’s cereal taste like ash. **  
**

“Goddamn government propaganda, is what it is,” Levi mutters to himself as he flips the channel to some game show. A few Supers come around, make a fucking mess, and suddenly the walls go up-- anyone with “ _Hyperhuman Abilities_ ” becomes the subject of talk radio and daytime television, catching everyone from actual telepaths to kids with suspiciously high test scores in the fervor. Two months later a some pimply faced teenager shows up on his doorstep, gasping from the climb to his sixth floor walk up, and says he’s here to recruit him for a new military branch.

“The Survey Corps, sir,” he puffs.

Levi spits at his feet.

He’d rather lose his rights, become a fucking pariah, be relegated to flickering TV and dry cereal for the rest of his miserable life than sign himself away to that gussied up prison.

He doesn’t need anything the Survey Corps has to offer, isn’t scared by the prospect of losing his rights because being poor meant he never really had any in the first place. He doesn’t need the fancy suits when he can make his own just fine, doesn’t need the spot in the Survey Corps Headquarters downtown when most of the crime happens on the outskirts, doesn’t need notoriety of a superhero name when the people he actually protects have taken to calling him Humanity’s Strongest.

And he sure as hell doesn’t need their “no killing” rule. Some people just need to die, he reasons, as he snaps some hired goon’s neck. Child traffickers, operating out of some abandoned warehouse, have been wreaking havoc in the neighborhood everyone calls the Underground, his neighborhood, for too long. They’ve been hard to track. Evasion tactics, decoys, some generally fucked up shit. Their muscled up halfwits sure know how to fight dirty though.

A fist catches him right across the cheekbone, the spot blossoming in pain but it's still not enough to slow him down. He grabs the man with his left hand, slashes his throat with the right, and throws him against a concrete pillar, his back breaking with a sharp snap that’s barely audible over the rest of the chaos.

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters, stabbing a man who lunges at him through the stomach. “It’s just me, you fuckin’ cry babies. Bitchin’ like I brought a whole goddamn army…”

He came from nothing, he’ll die nothing, and he’s okay with that. He just wants to take out as many twisted fucks as he can along the way.

* * *

 

The next morning his face is still throbbing when he gets to the diner, the walk from his apartment in the cool predawn air making the thrumming spot of pain burn bright.

“What happened to your face there, Kenny?” One of the cooks calls to him from the line as Levi pulls his apron over his head. The cook mock frowns, drying fake tears. “Missus beat you up again?”

“Fuck off, Eddie,” Levi snaps.

He hates the fake name he put on his work permit, wishes he’d chosen basically anything else, but there’s nothing to be done about it now. He hadn’t really been thinking straight when he’d bought it off the black market, obviously upset that it became illegal for him to hold any job outside the Survey Corps, so he’d panicked and given himself the stupid ass name Kenneth.

“Don’t worry, Ed, it’s not like he was gonna win any beauty pageants any time soon!” Max, the dishwasher, yells from the other end of the kitchen.

Both men erupt into laughter and Levi flips them the bird as he goes to wait on his regulars, the usual Tuesday mix of night shift workers just getting off and old people who like being awake at 4am for whatever reason.

He’s taking Mavis’s order when it happens. Mavis is 76 years old, always orders two egg whites with orange slices and toast every Tuesday and Thursday before going to visit her daughter in the group home right off the 76 bus lines. She has never strayed from her script once. But today she interrupts herself right in the middle of her egg order.

“Oh isn’t he wonderful?” she exclaims.

He follows her eyes up to the blurry TV mounted in the corner, The Commander smiling triumphantly down at them. The headline underneath the plastic smile reads: Survey Corps saves 12 children from trafficking ring in Underground. The hero delivers his interview in front of the warehouse Levi had busted up the night before.

Levi’s blood boils and pain on his face flares up angrily in response. He grits his teeth so hard he thinks he can hear them squeaking.

“Would you like hash browns or toast with that?”

* * *

 

It's two days later when Levi realizes he’s being followed. He’s not stupid. It's glaringly obvious the night some stranger gives him a quarter when he comes up short at the corner store. The man’s carefully curated outfit, his greasy blonde hair and poorly shaved scruff are too purposeful, too unnatural on someone who’s clearly never known desperation, who clearly doesn’t understand that pride isn’t a commodity only available to the rich.

The man’s appearance forces odd details from the past few months to snap into place: a new security cam installed on the street corner across the street from his apartment, a new regular with a penchant for blueberry pie and prying conversation, a dirty smudge on the corner of his electric bill. All innocuous enough on their own, especially spread out over so many weeks, but together with the man there’s something sinister about it.

He notices odd things more and more  as the weeks pass. Calls to Isabel drop for no reason. Fancy cars start lingering on the street where he goes to the gym. Ed disappears from work.

It keeps picking up in the weeks following the incident at the corner store but by the time the bruise on his cheekbone has healed, he's already convinced himself that he’s just paranoid. Isabel is doing five years, after all, it shouldn’t be surprising that the phone service in prison isn’t great. Tourists with BMW’s don’t come around often, but they could have wandered in and gotten lost. And Ed had always been a shifty guy anyway. At every odd new occurrence, he repeats his justifications like a mantra, says the power’s always going out, says his laptop has always been shitty and old, even though he knows there’s something deeply, troublingly wrong.

It’s late, a little before 4am, when whoever-the-fuck tries to follow him home from the diner and he finally loses his shit. He walks a block before stopping on the corner, can’t shake the feeling of dread telling him to run, walks another block, stops again, and starts to yell.

“Hey, jackass!” he calls into the empty rows of dark buildings. “Leave me the fuck alone!”

Somewhere down the block he hears the sound of gas hissing from a tank, of metal swishing through air, cutting the roaring humming of a city trying to sleep. He bolts. The sound follows, getting closer, and Levi has to close his eyes as debris lodged loose by some kind of grappling hook flies towards his eyes

“What the fuck?” he mutters, sprinting down an alley but he can't help the fact that he's not really concerned. He’s fast and he knows it but more importantly this is his neighborhood, his home, and no idiot with some wannabe Spiderman tech can outrun expert knowledge of the city’s nooks and crannies. He makes his way to a fire escape, throwing himself from landing to landing until he reaches the roof and-

Someone kicks him from behind, both feet to his back, and he doesn’t catch himself quick enough to avoid a mouthful of puddle.

“Stand down, Mike,” a voice above him says decisively. The boot on his upper back loosens but not by much- he pushes up but there’s no give.

“Get the fuck off me,” Levi growls.

“Mike,” the voice repeats in warning. There’s a second of hesitation before the boot is gone and Levi is pulling himself up to sitting, wiping his limp hair out of his eyes only to be greeted by the sight of The Commander.

Levi scoffs.

“What the fuck do you want?”

The man has the nerve to smile. “My name is Erwin Smith and I’d like to offer you a spot in the Survey Corps.”

Levi thinks of the newscasters, stoically reporting the founding of the Survey Corps, the ending of citizenship rights for Supers, the round-ups thinly disguised as recruiting efforts. He thinks of the name Kenny, the shitty fake work permit he uses, his graveyard shifts at the diner and Ed’s nauseating comments.

Levi launches to his feet before he’s realized what he’s doing, a knife pulled from his pocket in the same motion.

“I’ll fucking kill you,” Levi seethes, blade against Erwin’s throat. Somewhere behind him he hears a gun safety clicking off.

“I’m not scared of you,” Erwin says.

“Then you’re dumber than you look.”

Erwin’s eyes meet Levi’s, a mix of conviction and amusement and something distinctly hard. “Mike,” he says. Levi had almost forgotten the other man entirely. “Please head back to Headquarters and begin filing the report. I’ll be back soon.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Levi sees Mike leave after a moment of silent hesitation and he feels how utterly, completely alone they are as if the blade were against his own throat instead of Erwin’s.

“Maybe you’ll hear reason when it’s just the two of us,” Erwin says, almost to himself. Levi edges the knife in just a bit further, a pearl of blood collecting at the end of the crisp red line on Erwin’s neck.

“You can’t force me to join your little band of freaks,” he says.

“I wouldn’t try to” Erwin replies. Something about his tone, the same arrognorant earnestness that grates on his nerves anytime he hears it on TV, is different in real life. It makes Levi lower the knife cautiously, take a step back and look over the famed Commander for the first time.

He’s taller than Levi thought he’d be, blonder than the washed out colors of his TV ever show. His eyes get caught on the straps crisscrossing the man’s chest and legs.

“Omnidirectional Mobility Gear,” Erwin supplies. “Or 3DMG for short. It gets me around the city so fast I actually managed to catch up with you. A pretty great piece of tech, all in all.”

“Pretty great if you’re a talentless hack, yeah,” Levi grunts. He grips the knife at his side so tightly it gets slippery with his sweat.

“I guess so.” Erwin huffs a laugh. “That’s why I need your help-”

“I fucking told you,” Levi snarls. “You can’t force me to join.”

“And I told you,” Erwin says, his calm unaffected by Levi’s coarseness, “That I have no intention of forcing you to do anything. I’m offering you the position of Captain, a new one outside the traditional chain of command.”

Levi steps forward, forcing Erwin to look down. He wants to see behind the stoicness of the invisible Commander mask, to force Erwin out of the placidness he knows must be faked. “And why the fuck would I want that?”

“Levi.” Erwin smiles but there’s something different about this one, something more distant than the carefully molded curves he sees on TV. “Have you ever noticed how Supers are second class citizens?”

“Every fucking day.” Round-ups, graveyard shifts, a small plastic card baring his face and a name he’s come to despise.

“But we don’t have to be.” Erwin's voice is hushed. “Why can’t we hold jobs? Or own property or have a passport or get married?”

Levi shrugs. It’s sure as fuck never made any sense to him.

“Have you ever thought” Erwin says, voice so powerful it nearly makes him shiver. “That maybe those in power, are not fit to lead?”

Levi’s amazed by it all, by the fact that over time the idea that he’s equal, that he’s deserving, that he’s  _human_ , has become such a secret. He remembers nights in front of his washed out TV and the impassive newscasters delivering broadcasts that drive him to bury any hint of Levi Ackerman under false papers and carefully curated lies. He remembers the coolness of the despair that wraps around him more tightly than his sheets when he crawls into bed at night, at the thought of waking up and forcing himself to be Kenny again, at the helplessness of it all. With a jolt, he realizes that what Erwin makes him feel, for the first time in a long time, is hope.

But hope is a dangerous thing, sharp like the barbed wire fences around the Survey Corps headquarters. A gilded cage.

“I’ll think about it,” he says, making his way to the fire escape. He folds the half forgotten knife and slips it back into his pocket.

“You can do things that no one else can, Levi,” Erwin calls after him. But true to his word, he doesn’t move, doesn’t force Levi to do anything.“Me? I’m bound by duty and obligation. But you, part of the Survey Corps but set apart, a Captain. You can be yourself.”

Levi scoffs, stepping down the first two rungs of the ladder. “How do you know who I am?”

There’s a pause, a hesitation, and Erwin shrugs. “A hunch,” he finally says.

Levi laughs. “You’re fucking crazy.”

“So will you join or not, Levi?” Erwin asks with a smile that's different yet again, not plastic or distant but sharp and knowing.

Levi starts to lower himself down the fire escape, hand sore from how tightly he’d been gripping his knife just moments ago. “I told you,” he says, “I’ll think about it.”


End file.
